Bats Global Markets is going to new lengths to grab more of the market for exchange-traded funds, offering to pay companies rather than charge them to list the popular investment products on its exchange.

The Lenexa, Kansas-based exchange operator on Thursday plans to launch what it calls the Bats ETF Marketplace, which will pay ETF providers as much as $400,000 a year to list on Bats. Payments will vary depending on average daily volume.

Traditionally, ETF providers have paid between $5,000 and $55,000 a year to list on a stock exchange. Bats previously offered firms the option to list on its exchange for free. Besides the monetary incentive, the marketplace is also changing the way it rewards market makers for continuously offering to buy or sell ETFs, a move it said will help reduce volatility.

“We are redefining the relationship between ETF sponsors, investors and market makers,” CEO Chris Concannon said in an interview.

ETFs have come under greater scrutiny after they faced trading issues on August 24, including prices of ETFs being far out of whack compared with the prices of the underlying holdings. Exchanges, market makers and ETF sponsor firms are in discussions about how to make wider changes to rules to help prevent similar problems from happening.

“August 24 obviously makes us go back and say: ‘Are our decisions the right ones?’ ” said William Belden, managing director of ETF strategies at Guggenheim Investments.

He said the firm was re-evaluating its relationships with service providers.

Just a fraction of the more than 1,300 ETFs in the US are listed on Bats, but the exchange operator handles about 45% of trading of ETFs on exchanges and about 27% of overall trading of ETFs on exchanges and private venues, it said.

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Concannon, who joined BATS in 2014 from high-frequency trading firm Virtu and became CEO of Bats in February, has made ETFs a major focus. In April, the firm hired one of the New York Stock Exchange’s top ETF executives, Laura Morrison, and recently hired another ETF specialist from the NYSE, Rob Marrocco.

Concannon predicts the number of ETFs in the US will double in the next three years, driven in part by the rise of automated financial-advisory services. ETFs are a popular way for many investors to gain exposure to a diversified group of stocks, commodities and bonds. In July, global ETFs overtook hedge funds in total assets under management with about $2.97 trillion invested in them, according to London-based consultant ETFGI.

Write to Bradley Hope at bradley.hope@wsj.com and Leslie Josephs at leslie.josephs@wsj.com